Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I notice Paul uses chocolate ganache on all of his cakes prior to covering in fondant. Why is this? Is there another vanilla version? Not everyone wants chocolate in their cakes but I don’t see any other options to replace this.

thank you, Terri Clements

Hi Terri

Ganache is Paul’s prefered medium for crumbcoating and filling cakes. However, he does recognise that not everyone likes buttercream. In the free section of the site he has created tutorials on dark ganache, white ganache and buttercream. All the basics, pros and cons on the three mediums are explained here:

Free Online Cake Decorating Courses

Another tutorial which you may find useful is https://www.cakeflix.com/online-cake-decorating-courses/chocolate-buttercream-cornelli

White chocolate ganache or a stiff buttercream, flavoured with vanilla can be used as an alternative to dark chocolate ganache. Filling flavour ideas are many and only limited by your own imagination. I would suggest using natural high strength food flavouring, both for chocolate ganache and buttercream. Here is an option
http://www.foodieflavours.com/ or if using buttercream only, http://www.sugarandcrumbs.co.uk/

Hope this helps.
EDIT: Flavoured chocolate callets are also available to purchace online. Google ‘flavoured chocolate callets’ to see suppliers and flavours.